Bernardine Evaristo: Manifesto
Bernardine Evaristo is the author of the 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other, and the recently released memoir Manifesto, which investigates her long journey as a Black writer in a white-dominated industry. Evaristo’s writing is characterized by experimentation, daring, subversion, and challenging the myths of various Afro-diasporic histories and identities, and her books range in genre from poetry to short story to drama to criticism. Q&A with Dr. Carmen Rojas, President and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation.
The event began with a poem read by one of the youth poets. I wish I still had a recording of the event, so I could credit the reader and hear his words again. My notes say he “saw the incite of his life through mature eyes” and that’s unfortunately the best I can do for those who didn’t attend. I feel like I am repeating myself every time, but I love this program that encourages the artists of the next generation, poets we will be seeing in their own SAL events down the line. Even if I had no context for something SAL was doing, I would know I still have the youth poet to look forward to.
The event officially began with a history lesson from Evaristo, both on herself and what it is like to live Black in white Britain. Approaching this evening I felt the same way I had when I started reading Girl, Woman, Other. The book beginning with an opening at the National Theatre in London had me worried, the slang being casually tossed around made me think I wasn’t going to get the book, based off the fact that my knowledge of London is from white vloggers and films featuring almost entirely white casts. Even then I don’t always follow the cultural references. Much like her book however, Evaristo led into this lecture with information we needed, or didn’t need but benefited knowing more about.
Reading Girl, Woman, Other in anticipation of the event, my only regret is that I couldn’t get my hands on a copy of Manifesto. The two seem like they would pair well together. When she reflected on feeling accepted for the first time in theatre camp, seeing other children who looked and dressed like her, it was easy to think of her character Amma. That connection only grew as she described her early days being a writer/activist/artist, making theatre that wouldn’t have been made if she hadn’t done it alongside the company members seeking that same recognition in their art. She told an interesting story that made me think of Amma’s play, how she read a book about the Black Roman mercenaries who lived in ancient London and how none of the museum curators believed that possible until at least a decade later when some construction workers happened to find bones traced back to African roots. Out of the idea she stumbled across she wrote The Emperor’s Babe, but when she spoke of the experience she held no resentment for the curators who couldn’t imagine Black Romans possibly existing.
What I like most about Bernardine Evaristo is her ability to see people for who they are and not who they appear to be. When someone comes from a society rooted in racism, she doesn’t sit fuming in anger about how they could possibly be that way, she understands where it comes from and pities their life, that they have to live with that sort of close minded view of the world. I think it’s reflected in Girl, Woman, Other and I bet it’s just as relevant in her other books.
The mark of a good SAL event is when I have to pair down what I’ve taken notes on into what I want to write about. Attending the lecture half of the event was like taking a college course. You should have been there so you could understand how her father’s immigrant story fit into her story, how it influenced her writing. You would have a deeper understanding on where racism comes from in England, how it was created to justify the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the othering of minorities like the Irish, long before they started shipping humans for their stolen wealth. You really missed hearing her talk about her activism, about how through her latest venture, she’s republishing the lost works of Black authors so that generations now and to come have a new set of books to consider “classics”.
I want to touch on two things brought up in the Q&A. The first was how violence towards women was a theme throughout Girl, Woman, Other and Manifesto, something she told Dr. Carmen Rojas no one else had brought up yet. What I found particularly interesting was that the character Carole from Girl, Woman, Other was supposed to come earlier in the book, but Evaristo felt the violence vital to telling Carole’s story was too much for a reader still trying to invest in the novel. Evaristo and Rojas talked about how in Manifesto there is a story of Evaristo being physically run out of a home she was subletting by a man who no longer wanted her there. She talked about forming the book around places because they influenced her life as much as what happened where they were.
There was a lot more conversation between the two, notably they talked of growing up in immigrant households and queer identity being defined by the person experiencing it, not the society witnessing it. Again I wish I could talk at length about their conversation, but instead I encourage you to attend the next Seattle Arts & Lectures event. The other thing I did want to mention was Evaristo talking about the class structure in America being so untraceable. To the point that when she flew back from an American book tour, she could hear the difference in the classes of British passengers on an airplane by their dialects and she could see class in how they held themselves. Americans she could never get a bead on, no matter how much time she spent in the country. I bring that up because I find it interesting, I would love to hear someone talk at length on why that might be.
By the time I started chapter two of Girl, Woman, Other, I was already excited for Bernardine Evaristo’s event. I loved hearing everything she had to say, as with so many of the authors featured, it only added to my experience of her writing. I look forward to reading more of her books, and to watching Dr. Carmen Rojas talk with author Derecka Purnell about her book Becoming Abolitionists. If you’ve gotten this far, go check out the Seattle Arts & Lectures Events page and get tickets to the next speaker you don’t want to miss.
I review events for #SAL as part of the #SALSuperFanClub; in exchange for a free ticket, I offer my unbiased review.